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Hackers have broken into Sony's PlayStation website and visitors' computers are risk, the IT security firm Sophos has warned.

Web security experts at SophosLabs discovered unauthorized code from criminals on pages promoting SingStar Pop and God of War. The code would cause pop-up to appear on visitors screen telling them viruses had been detected on their computer in an attempt to scare the user into purchasing anti-virus software.

"There are millions of videogame lovers around the world, many of whom will visit Sony's PlayStation website regularly to find out more about the latest console games," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.

The group further warned that the hackers who compromised the webpages could easily alter the payload so that it became more malicious, and install code designed to harvest confidential information from users among other things.

"Most would never expect that surfing to a website like this could potentially infect them with malware. If users do not have sufficient protection in place then they might find that before they know it they have been scared into handing their credit card details over to a bunch of cybercriminals,"

"It is essential that all websites, especially when they are high profile like this or receiving a large level of traffic, have been properly hardened to prevent hackers from injecting malicious code on to what should be legitimate webpages," Cluley added.